Re: What Are the Great SF Novels of the 1990s?

Andrew Wheeler wrote:
David Tate wrote:

Mike Schilling wrote:
"David Tate" <dtate@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1149780922.367943.13320@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
James Nicoll wrote:
In article <D+ww9xB$CBiEFAYU@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

I can't speak for Andrew but my impression is that novels outsell
single-author anthologies by the same author by a factor of five.

I'd like to echo someone elsethread who asked "So what *do* SFBC
members buy?". If the answer is "mostly Kevin J. Anderson, Piers
Anthony, and Terry Brooks", then I'm not sure what the point of a "best
of the decade" series would be.

This is a bit of a non sequitur,

Sorry; I thought the link was clear from thread context, but apparently
not. My comment was in response to a great many individual tidbits
here and there throughout the thread about what does and does not sell
in general, and what does and does not sell to SFBC members in
particular.

I'm writing a lot of quick replies, since I started this thread, and I
thought it was only polite to respond when people give me suggestions.
Please don't take anything I type in five seconds while my kids are
playing "Pikmin" in the background as the Sacred Truths of the SFBC.

Folks here convinced me to do Tiptree in the '70s series, after all --
I'm not untrainable.

So, was it a good idea to do Tiptree in the '70s series? Did it work
out well? Despite everyone's automatic assumptions in response to what
I wrote, I'm not trying to criticize you or any authors in particular
-- I'm just trying to figure out what exactly would count as 'success'
here, and what's likely to achieve it.

since the preference for novels over
collections goes well beyond Kevin J Anderson fans; from what I've read,

In case anyone's wondering, Anderson's current space opera series tanked
hugely in the club. They're not some kind of straw-men who only like
things this group hates, they're just hugely unadventurous these days.
They seem to only want books that they already know that they like, and
have a great reluctance to venture even a little distance from that.

That's interesting, but (to me at least) still unhelpful, because I
have no idea at all what would count as "a book they already know that
they like".

Sure -- but Andrew has already established that SFBC members stay away
from (say) _A Fire Upon the Deep_ in droves, too. That suggests that
SFBC readers have very different tastes and bookbuying criteria from
(say) r.a.sf.w regulars. If part of the point is to sell books to
those SFBC members, it would be useful to know *how* different.

I should say that I'm being a bit flippant. The Vinge books were
Selections, which means they went out as an automatic shipment to
something like twenty thousand people each. Many of those copies stuck,
but a fair percentage came back. The problem was that nobody much wanted
to take Vinge books for free when joining the club (which is the way we
can generally get rid of Selection returns), so we were stuck with a lot
of _Fire_, in particular, for a number of years.

That does it mean it was a not-terribly-successful Selection, which is
still pretty good. (There are lots of levels below that.) But the
message was something like "Vinge's audience wants his books when
they're brand new, and he doesn't pick up many readers later." That may
not be true these days, but it seemed to be the lesson then.

OK, thanks for the clarification. That's considerably less surprising
than what I thought you were saying. (I'm not sure it helps me tailor
recommendations any better, but wotthehell...)

Andrew's tryting to do something good here;

Is he? I can't tell, because it has become very unclear what exactly
it is that he's trying to do. That was my point, and I thought the
question made that reasonably clear.

No, I'm trying to do evil. Evil, I say! I will bring down the whole of
SF around me!

I'm trying to sell books. Given the choice, I'd rather sell a good one.

Well, yeah. But that still leaves a huge gulf of ignorance on my part
(and, I suspect, many others' around here) concerning what books sell,
and what kinds of good books have a chance to be part of that. And,
though this seems to piss people off when I ask, how heavily you are
weighting 'sell' versus 'good'.

But not all audiences rank the same books as "good" and not all books
are for all audiences. SFBC members tend to be readers for
entertainment, the great "beer money" crowd Anderson used to talk about.
They appreciate good reads much more than fine literature.

Sure. But, to paraphrase a nice editor, not all audiences rank the
same books as "good reads", either. Some data on what has sold
particular well and what has tanked, if not too sensitive, would be
useful. (If it *is* too sensitive, then just say so and I'll shut up.
I respect proprietary data.)

Despite how everyone seems to be interpreting what I wrote, I haven't
criticized you or any particular authors in anything I've said in this
thread. I *have* concluded that I don't really understand what kind of
books might lead to 'success' in your project, nor what the success
criteria for your project really are. It clearly is neither "publish
the best books from the '90s", nor "publish the books from the '90s
that will sell the best".

Blame it on my professional background -- I make my living getting
people to tell me what their real criteria for success are, and then
helping them find solutions that get as close to that as possible. In
that context, finding the optimal solution to the wrong problem is
usually worse than finding a mediocre solution to the right problem.

Cheers,
David Tate

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What Are the Great SF Novels of the 1990s?
    ... members buy?". ... here and there throughout the thread about what does and does not sell ... Sure -- but Andrew has already established that SFBC members stay away ... best books of the 90's to the SFBC membership? ...
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  • Re: What Are the Great SF Novels of the 1990s?
    ... here and there throughout the thread about what does and does not sell ... If part of the point is to sell books to ... those SFBC members, it would be useful to know *how* different. ... Andrew Wheeler: Professional Editor, Amateur Wise-Acre ...
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  • Re: What Are the Great SF Novels of the 1990s?
    ... here and there throughout the thread about what does and does not sell ... Sure -- but Andrew has already established that SFBC members stay away ... best books of the 90's to the SFBC membership? ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: What Are the Great SF Novels of the 1990s?
    ... was it a good idea to do Tiptree in the '70s series? ... -- I'm just trying to figure out what exactly would count as 'success' ... some books that will sell pretty well to anchor the series (or, ... I'm trying to sell books. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)